Program

Program

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Artificial intelligence (AI) research once used to be a topic of academic curiosity, but the recent surge of technological breakthroughs made AI a focus of mainstream companies as a fundamental tool to implement real-world business applications in every field. On Day 1, we will explore actual applications of cutting-edge AI technologies and uncover emerging opportunities and limitations in AI’s impact on business applications and the society.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of research and experiments on AI systems performing creative tasks – from systems that compose music, paint, design, and write stories. Will these AI systems lead to enhanced creativity and its democratization?

In this panel discussion, we intend to discuss things like how we see AI startups, what kind of ethics we should value when we are assessing startups, and how society should react to AI technologies, from investor’s perspectives.

In this session, we will glimpse into emerging AI technologies such as embodied cognitive agents that assist people with cognitive tasks and autonomous AI agents in a digital game environment, as well as the role of consciousness or mind in developing future AI technologies. How will these technologies shape our future society?

Propelled by joint efforts by academia and industry, AI technology is making progress at an ever-faster rate. What are the next AI technologies that lead to fundamental changes in our life and society? Do AIs eventually gain awareness and start exhibiting spontaneous behavior? On Day 2, we will inquire into emerging new AI technologies and possible concerns and impacts we might face in the future.

This session will look into humanity’s path towards increasingly powerful artificial intelligence, contemplate on the expected paradigm shifts in our society, and shed light on steps that can lead us to a beneficial future with general AI. Challenges, such as overcoming the missing human element in AI and the integration of AI in all aspects of our society, provide opportunities at the same time that will be explored in this session from different perspectives, ranging from compassionate robots to issues of morality, all the way to re-evaluating our attitude towards the value of life itself.

In recent years deep-learning systems have surpassed human abilities in the very functions that were thought to be least amenable to mechanization: Go, face recognition, navigation of complex environments such as driving. Now researchers are seeking to endow A.I. systems with other quintessentially human faculties, such as adaptability, intrinsic motivation, and self-modeling. What engineering needs are driving these efforts? What new problems and tradeoffs might these new capabilities entail? Do machines need a specific physical embodiment or even a form of consciousness? Do A.I. systems need to look more like H.I.—human intelligence—or are there other models for generalized intelligence?